Eat the Rich: Dinner at Bandao Pearl at Marine Gateway

If my dad wasn’t given a $100 gift certificate to Bandao Pearl (part of the Peninsula group), we never would have set foot in this high-end Chinese seafood restaurant. (My dad got the gift certificate from a friend who didn’t want to use it. One look at the prices on the menu and we could see why!) The food itself was no better or worse than what you can find at much cheaper mid-range Chinese restaurants around town. This place caters to the rich who want to show off. Period.

Bandao Pearl is on the same level as the Cineplex and Winners at Marine Gateway (Marine Drive and Cambie).

We were there on a Saturday night around 6:30pm and the place was dead. Not a good sign. The staff wandering the floor outnumbered the customers. Mild sense of boredom and dread hung in the air.

There’s a decent liquor store next to the fake Irish pub Dublin Crossing. I picked up a fairly fresh 4-pack of Yellow Dog High 5 Hazy IPA. But really, nothing in this complex appeals to me. Not even the busy T&T.

Did I mention this place was dead on a Saturday night?

The restaurant has 13 private rooms and a large main dining room that houses this 32-seat monstrosity. Conspicuous consumption has never been about practicality, only about fake, surface-level appearances.

Want to see what the private rooms here look like? Want to see what happened when the Vancouver Regionals of Miss Asia Canada was held here? Click here!

We hit the chrysanthemum tea (“guk fa cha”) hard. The service was great. They refilled our teapots promptly. The staff had nothing else to do.

Let’s gawk at these prices:

You’ll see all the usual status signifiers here…like wagyu pointlessly shoved into a bun. You get six buns for $38.80, even though the photo (“for references only”) shows eight. That’s $6.47 for each bun. Those flawless buns from Baker & Table don’t seem that expensive anymore…

In another status-driven move (as opposed to quality or skill-driven), you can get sashimi in Chinese restaurants now. We actually DID see a couple sitting next to us order this. If you got bank, you can get the Supreme platter for $438.

Their infamous Signature Fried Rice shaped like a fish for $68.80.

That glossy menu really catches the glare of the lights. Sorry about that! Scallops and Pea Tips is a classic, but the price knocks the wind out of me a bit.

The waiter said the live fish of the day was rock cod. So, in that sense, no different from any other mid-range Chinese restaurant in the city. But I’m sure we’d be paying a lot more for essentially the same dish here, so we opted out of fresh fish for this meal.

We appreciated seeing a Hakka section in the menu.

Now we’re talking. Pork belly with preserved vegetables is one of my favourite Chinese dishes.

We don’t see oxtail that often, so we got this too.

There’s a whole page dedicated to sea cucumber. A whole Australian sea cucumber for $268.

Spiky dildo-looking Japanese sea cucumber for a more reasonable (I guess) $68.80.

A whole page dedicated to shark’s fin. $168 for 3 taels, which works out to 1/4 lb. This aspect of Chinese dining has always bothered me. The more endangered, rare, and expensive, the better.

A more reasonable soup option that we went for: crab & fish maw.

I’m sure the ingredients are top-notch and dish is labour-intensive, but who can afford this? Even for a special occasion? Could I appreciate it enough to justify the $88.80 bowl that I would be eating? What kind of face would I have to make so that my host saves face when she serves us this dish?

There was plenty more to the menu but it was just awkward taking photos of it, but there’s all the typical expensive seafood options with atypical specifications (eg. do you want Atlantic lobster or California lobster?).

Classy chopsticks. Black for personal eating, brown for grabbing/serving food. Now that’s actually a great idea.

Not that much crab meat but plenty of crunchy, textural fish maw (fish stomach). For all the griping I did about the menu above, the actual food tastes good. This soup was mild, balanced, flavourful, and most importantly, not too salty for my parents. My parents’ palates are definitely changing as they get older, preferring blander food. Well-seasoned food comes across as “too salty” for them. Is that happening with your parents?

I love a bit of red vinegar in my fish maw soup.

Deep Fried Pumpkin with Salty Egg Yolk ($16.80).

The batons of kabocha squash coated with salted duck(?) egg yolk with a bit of sugar thrown into the coating as well. Lightly crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. Good, but Wicca’s already thinking of ways to make it at home.

The chicken was served with a great ginger scallion oil. But I’d expect nothing less.

Braised Hakkan Ankang Pork Belly with Preserved Vegetable ($26.80). This looked great when it hit the table. Nicely presented. Lots of sauce. However the meat was dry. Drier than other renditions we’ve had from Grand Dynasty, Come Along, and even Mui Garden. The overall flavour was a bit too sweet as well, which became irksome the more you ate. A slight disappointment.

Braised Oxtail with Taro & Pumpkin ($28.80) served in a hot metal bowl.

Good, strong, savoury flavour. Fair amount of oxtail, so in that sense we got our money’s worth (relatively speaking). But as common with a lot of Chinese restaurants, I always want them to cook the oxtail, pig’s knuckle, and other tough bone-in cuts more so that I don’t have to work so hard getting through the connective tissue. But what meat I could safely get off the bone was infused with good flavour.

The takeout containers are next-level! Our dinner for four cost ~$180. We could’ve easily spent much, much, much more.

Overall the food was competent-to-good, but you’re paying a “rich bitch” surcharge to eat here. You can find similar tasting and similar quality food for less at the many other mid-range Chinese restaurants that coat the city.

2 days agoby dennisthefoodieS H R I N K A G E // No shrinkage here with @backcountrybrewing 's impressive 3.4% #IndiaSessionAle#IWasInThePool ! You get most of the juicy goodness of a full-on #hazyipa but with half the alcohol! The finish is understandably lighter and waterier but for the style it's quite an accomplishment. #craftbeer#backcountrybrewing#yvr#vancouver // You might've noticed way less beer posts lately. I've stopped drinking alcohol on most weekdays, so cut down my consumption by half. Feels good but my beer fridge is bursting at the seams. Strictly cream of the crop from now on (hopefully).

2 days agoby dennisthefoodieC A U L I F L O W E R // Wicca whipped up a #ChickenCurry with #RoastedCauliflower for #dinner . The extra roasting step is so worth it! She also threw in mushrooms, sweet potato, tomatoes, and carrots. We've been using Megachef blue label fish sauce for cooking lately and it's great — a bit bolder and saltier than Red Boat. (We still love Red Boat for making nuoc cham though!) The Megachef has great depth, which you can tell by tasting side-by-side with cheap fish sauce, which tastes mostly like salt and stank. #curry#yvr#vancouver

2 days agoby dennisthefoodieS W E E T ' N S W E E T P O R K // Some good #Korean#SweetAndSourPork ($18) with crunchy rice flour batter at @andamiro_korean_bistro . Like Chinese S&S pork, this Korean version is still plenty sweet and good but you have to be in the mood. Swipe to see the royal flourish of omelette strips on their Royal Beef Japchae ($16) and decent Bulgogi Stew ($12). Good value and service at one of the few Korean restaurants in Vancouver proper. They gotta do something about the smell of gas though. It's not the mercaptan (rotten eggs)

2 days agoby dennisthefoodieC H E E S E ' N C H I C K E N // Some good/decent #Korean eats this past weekend with @michelle_wsy . (Great seeing you and the family! Thanks for the exclusive American Spam!) I finally got to try a Korean bbq dish with melty cheese in it: #ChickenBulgogi ($13) with #cheese (+$3). Amusing but not particularly delicious. Watery bland cheese hardens fast. The restaurant @andamiro_korean_bistro is in a convenient location (for us), has good value and prompt service, with decent food that does the job. Quick review of this place now posted on my blog. #andamiro

2 days agoby dennisthefoodieO U T O F S E A S O N // No kidding, #uni is totally out of season right now, but that didn't stop me from trying these dirt cheap big unis (3 for $10) from Steveston. After all the work of cutting these guys open and cleaning the #seaurchin gonads, the result tasted watery with none of the silky richness that uni has from October to March. Lesson learned! (Actually I already knew this going in, but I had to test the theory for myself .) #yvr#vancouver#sashimi